Posted on 04/04/2008 1:29:10 PM PDT by blam
RAA 'loses' JMW Turner's £20m bequest
Last Updated: 8:13am BST 04/04/2008
The Royal Academy of Arts is facing questions over what happened to substantial funds which were bequeathed by the artist JMW Turner more than 150 years ago.
Turner, who had studied at the institution from the age of 14, left £20,000 in his will for a gold medal prize for landscape painting worth £20, which he wanted to be awarded every other year.
Descendants of the artist and leading scholars are now demanding to know what has happened to the money, which would be worth around £2 million today, and fear it may have been siphoned-off and not used as Turner intended.
The Turner Medal has not been awarded since 2000 and for many years beforehand the prize was limited to just £50, if it was given out at all.
Jean Steward, whose great-great-grandfather was Turner's uncle, was surprised that the academy was claiming not to know what had happened to the money.
She said: "There should be an investigation. It doesn't seem fair that the money isn't being used as Turner would have liked."
Charles Saumarez Smith, the RA's chief executive, said that tracing the funds was difficult as the academy's files were incomplete.
Didn’t Bill Clinton’s great,great,great grandfather work as
a bookeeper at the Royal Academy?
That's why the conservative John M. Olin ordered in his will that his Olin Foundation be disbanded after a limited number of years.
Olin had seen what happened to too many other charitable foundations like the Ford Foundation: Leftists eventually take over and either squander the money in worthless causes, or worse, use it to undermine the very institutions the founders intended to honor.
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